[Animal modeling] - construction and evaluation of a mouse model of chronic restrained intestinal stress injury

  Objective: Based on the characteristics of social psychological stress leading to inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and a series of other diseases, an experimental chronic restraint mouse intestinal stress injury model was established to explore the pathogenic mechanism and prevention measures of chronic restraint stress-induced gastrointestinal diseases.

  Method: Eighteen male SPF grade BALB/c mice were acclimated for 7 days and randomly divided into two groups based on body weight: a control group and a chronic restraint stress group. Perform restraint stress on mice for 3 hours a day for 14 consecutive days to establish a model of intestinal injury. Evaluate the model by observing body weight, pathological changes in intestinal tissue, detection of tight junction protein expression, apoptosis of intestinal epithelial cells, and expression levels of inflammatory cytokines mRNA.

  After 14 days of chronic restraint stress, mice showed weight loss, shortened duodenal villus height, abnormal crypt structure, and decreased villus/crypt ratio; Inflammatory cell infiltration and irregular crypt structure in the colon mucosa. The results of protein immunoblotting, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence staining showed that the expression of tight junction proteins Occludin and Claudin ⁃ 1 in the duodenum and colon of mice significantly decreased after chronic restraint stress (P<0.05); The expression of the apoptotic protein Cleared ⁃ Caspase ⁃ 3 in intestinal epithelial cells significantly increased (P<0.05). In addition, the mRNA expression results of intestinal inflammatory factors and chemokines showed that chronic restraint stress for 14 days significantly increased IL-1 in the duodenum of mice β、  IL ⁃ 6, MCP ⁃ 1, TNF ⁃ α、 The expression of IL-10 gene (P<0.05); Chronic restraint stress significantly increased colon IL-1 in mice for 14 days β、 The expression of IL-6 and MCP-1 (P<0.001).

  Conclusion: The use of a mouse behavior restriction device to continuously restrain mice for 14 days resulted in abnormal intestinal tissue structure, intestinal barrier dysfunction, intestinal epithelial cell apoptosis, and intestinal inflammatory response in stressed mice, indicating the successful construction of a chronic restraint stress intestinal injury mouse model.